Lawbeat: Staying 'friends' as allegiances shift for DA

Published 4:42 pm, Tuesday, August 7, 2012

Former Troy City Clerk William A. McInerney, right, a Democrat, admitted Friday that he signed a voter's signature to a Working Families Party absentee ballot in 2009 to steer the vote to his party's candidate in front of Judge George Pulver in Rensselaer County Court in Troy, N.Y. Aug 26, 2011. Standing with McInerney is his attorney James Long. (Skip Dickstein / Times Union)

The longtime Albany lawyer is the attorney for Albany County District Attorney David Soares' campaign and has been his personal lawyer. Long is also the attorney for the Glenmont-based Laborers Local 190, which now strongly supports Soares' challenger, Lee Kindlon, in the September Democratic primary.

On July 30, Anthony Fresina, the construction workers union's business manager, joined Kindlon at a protest of a contractor using non-union labor. He said: "Lee's given us a commitment and I think that Lee's background in the area of the community and just the fact that he came out here today to support us on a demonstration against one of those unscrupulous contractors, it says a lot about the individual."

The endorsement is recent.

On Nov. 21, Fresina and his father, Laborers' union official Sam Fresina, not only attended a breakfast for Soares at the Taste restaurant in Albany but Sam Fresina was one of the hosts. The event was called "Soares on the Side of Labor" and, according to the DA's campaign manager, Kathleen Campbell, the Fresinas pledged $7,000 in union support to Soares.

The invitation stated: "David's track record of protecting the integrity of workers' pensions, enforcing prevailing wage laws, and defending workplace health and safety standards is a testament to why he wins union support hands-down. The Labor community believe Albany County District Attorney David Soares is by far the best person for the job, for union members and for our community."

The Laborers' money never arrived. And the Fresinas are now in Kindlon's camp. What happened?

People with knowledge of the situation say Local 190 wanted Soares' office to bring a fraud-related case against an Albany-based paving company which uses non-union labor and has found lucrative work in Albany. Soares' office did not bring any charges which, the sources say, irked the Fresinas.

When he appeared with Kindlon at the demonstration near work being done an Interstate 90 overpass near Fuller Road, Anthony Fresina said Soares made "false promises" to the union to go after unscrupulous contractors, wage violators and employers who misclassify workers.

"There's no record to speak of because everything that was told to us in the past — there's nothing been done," Fresina said. "We've given him cases that we've prepared for him that the (Department of Labor) usually gets involved in. We've given him those cases, and those cases have gone nowhere. His office has had them for over two years now."

Long, meanwhile, might be sandwiched between opposing sides, but he's taking it in stride.

"I'm friends with everybody," he said, "and those friendships will survive this political dust-up."

The CANA event, which is supposed to feature 10-minute presentations by the candidates for DA and those in the Democratic primaries for the city's two Assembly seats, falls on the same night as another forum sponsored by the League of Women Voters of Albany County.

Campbell said the DA was hesitant to commit to both events, citing the risk that one would run into the other.

But Kindlon — who's been needling Soares to debate him for weeks by semi-regularly posting photos of an empty podium adorned with a Soares campaign sign on a website devoted specifically to the topic — said he still plans to attend both events.

The CANA forum is scheduled to start at 6:30 p.m. at the city's public library on Washington Avenue. The League of Women Voters forum will take place at the Holiday Inn Wolf Road in Colonie. While Kindlon's campaign said it has yet to be given an exact start time, it has been told it may start around 8 p.m.

A switch in roles

Until recently, Brad Maione was spokesman for the Soares' campaign. Now he has that post for the campaign of Patricia Fahy, one of six Democrats seeking to succeed Assemblyman Jack McEneny The DA's campaign has yet to hire another staffer to handle the media.

Way back when, Maione was a spokesman for Attorney General and Gov. Eliot Spitzer,